


we feel it all (the rise before the fall)

by quietlyintoemptyspaces



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, Flash Fic, Gen, Magical Claudia Stilinski, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Nosebleed, References to Norse Religion & Lore, World Trees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-30
Packaged: 2018-01-10 13:45:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1160397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietlyintoemptyspaces/pseuds/quietlyintoemptyspaces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Are you sure this is safe?” Scott asks.</p>
<p>His mother had connected to the tree, tried to fix it, and it had drained her like everything else. “No,” Stiles says, and it’s the first thing that rings true. And then he says something else. </p>
<p>The words fall from his tongue and curl in the air, wrap themselves around the stump, sizzle into the dead wood. Stiles flattens his palm into the exposed rings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we feel it all (the rise before the fall)

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently this is what happens when I'm trying to focus on another story, while watching Pacific Rim and reading random Wikipedia pages on Norse Mythology. (Okay, maybe not so random.)
> 
> It started with Stiles and a nosebleed, and then it became him drifting with the root of Yggdrasil connecting to Earth, which, in this case, happened to be the Nemeton. I don't even know...
> 
> I was going to work some Sterek in, but I think Derek got mad at Stiles' comment about sexual healing and refused to cooperate, so it's Gen.
> 
> Also, the title comes from the song "Drift" by Ramin Djawadi. It's from the movie. And also my ringtone.

“I’m fine.”

 

Only he’s not, he’s really, really not. Stiles’ entire body is shaking, hands trembling like there’s too much Adderall running through his system. He hasn’t taken his medication in far too long, long enough for the tree to start talking to him again. He can taste the copper tang of blood in his mouth, can feel the thick red drip from his nose.

 

There is darkness in the air, in the soil beneath his sneakers, so much that he can feel it in his soul. It shatters him, rubs the memory of his mother raw, and all the wolves are watching him, the lamb led to slaughter.

 

“I’m fine,” he says again, and this time he almost believes it.

 

Scott steps forward, hesitating, one hand stretched forward like he wants to touch Stiles but isn’t sure the contact would be welcome. “Dude, your eyes…”

 

They’re glowing, Stiles doesn’t even have to look in a mirror to know that. His mother’s did the same thing, as had all of her blood relatives that he had met before the worlds took her back. He’s not sure why, no one ever explained it to him, but now, he’s connected enough to the tree that he can feel the disconnect in the roots of it, can feel the places his mother touched trying to fix it. Died trying to fix it.

 

But he can’t focus on that right now. There’s something else there, that darkness, and someone is using it, fueling it. He’s connected enough that the tree tells him, hisses the name into his ear and breathes the picture of her into his mind.

 

Stiles looks past Scott and on to Derek, shakes his head. “I can’t believe you bought the sexual healing line.” He can see the silver glow of scars that aren’t there, healed with help from the tree. “Wounds like that don’t just heal with a kiss from a pretty girl.”

 

The night converges in his mind, Derek and Jennifer, Julia, naked beneath the moon, Lydia and Stiles, finally the sane ones, rescuing suicidal werewolves. Sex and suicidal tendencies is a strange combination.

 

“I know where to go.”

 

*

 

He remembers his mother lying in the dirt, nestled between decaying roots that were somehow still alive. She had looked close to death, weak in a way Stiles, at the time, had never seen her before. That connection he’d felt then, just starting, that disconnected connection, he feels so strongly now.  He follows it, and the wolves follow him. He’s almost surprised that the entire forest hasn’t withered and blackened with how much darkness the tree leaks out. It’s smothering.

 

The area around the stump is dry, just dirt without proper nutrients, soil drained dry of life like the shrubs that had flourished once.

 

The veins in Stiles’ wrists twitch.

 

“Are you sure this is safe?” Scott asks.

 

His mother had connected to the tree, tried to fix it, and it had drained her like everything else. “No,” Stiles says, and it’s the first thing that rings true. And then he says something else. It’s said in a language no one here knows, and Stiles can’t be sure that Lydia doesn’t know it, but that doesn’t matter. He’s heard the story from his mother and her father, in this language, but he’s never tried speaking it.

 

The words fall from his tongue and curl in the air, wrap themselves around the stump, sizzle into the dead wood. Stiles flattens his palm into the exposed rings.

 

*

 

It is not meant for darkness. But neither is it meant for light.

 

It is meant for serpents in her roots, eagles in her sky, and stags in her middle. It is meant for pain, and life, and death. It is a place for gods to meet, and it is meant to be a balance.

 

The scale has long been tipped, and there has been too much pain, too much death, not enough life.

 

But now life greets her with open arms. The sapling she holds insider herself, the sapling that still touches the other roots, that still greets other worlds, unfolds from her center and grows, cracks at what is left of her, cracks and breaks and shatters, until what is left of her is left to fertilize the new soil of her rebirth.

 

It is meant to be held in the branches and roots and limbs of the world tree. Finally, she is connected.

 

*

 

Stiles is still trembling, his nose a waterfall of blood, but beneath his hands is new bark, new leaves, new connection. The darkness fades fast, and whatever power Jennifer-Julia had is now gone.

 

It could be his, if he so chose, but Derek and Scott are standing on either side of him, their hands on him, steadying and possibly leaching pain. Behind his closed eyes, he sees a demon wolf wage war on the sun, can feel the vague vibrations of serpents rolling in the sea. The life scratching at his palm whispers to him that it’s not time yet.

 

“What the hell just happened?” Derek asks.

 

“I think I just saved the worlds,” Stiles says. The tree laughs in the back of his mind and he laughs with it. Nobody corrects him on his choice of words.

 

“Dude,” Scott says on his other side, “You just made a big ass tree come back to life.”

 

Stiles opens his eyes and sees. There is grass beneath his feet and leaves above his head and everything feels very alive right now. “No,” he says as he pulls his hand away, leaving behind a print made of his blood trapped in the bark. “I only helped.”

 

*

 

Somewhere, in the grain of the tree, is a memory of his mother, and she smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> My excuse for this, other than the crazy mish-mash of info and fandoms rolling around in my brain, is that I've been walking a lot and it's entirely possible the endorphins have gotten to me.
> 
> I totally know how Derek and Scott feel though, because I have no idea what just happened either.


End file.
